Granada, check - on to Seville

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  Seville, Spain
Tuesday, February 13, 2007

We have a few days down in Spain and are already on to our second city.  After a few days in Granada, we moved on to Seville today.  Initial impressions are definitely positive.  While I definitely liked Granada and thought seeing the Alhombra was amazing, I think Seville just seems like a great city to walk around and take in.

Nothing too eventful to report for the trip over.  My flight to Frankfurt got held up a little while San Francisco and I was worried I was going to miss my connection, but everything turned out okay.  My main concern was that my tired and cranky brothers would be waiting in the Madrid airport waiting for me if I missed my flight.  The upshot was that I made it.  The downside was that when I arrived in Madrid, it took over an hour for our bags to come out.  Apparently, it was the last day for this particular group of baggage holders, so they weren´t too concerned about time!  The funny thing was about 30 minutes after we landed when the baggage belt started moving and about 6 bags came out before it stopped.  The happy crew took their bags and walked away, while the rest of us had another 45 minutes to wait.  Needless to say it almost turned into an international incident when the fat American in the Hawaiin shirt started yelling at the baggage handlers.

After being yelled at by the brothers for my tardiness for a bit, we got on the road and headed south.  We arrived in Granada around 9pm, but got a little lost driving into town.  Somehow we ended up on a narrow medieval street that even a motorbike would have a hard time navigating.  We were relieved when we finally found our way back to a boulevard and eventually to a parking garage.  After about asking at about 5 pensiones, we finally found a place to stay and were good to go.

Granada was a pretty interesting town, although inhabited by way too many American exchange students.  The highlight was definitely seeing the Alhombra, which I admit I knew little about before this trip.  For those of you who are as ignorant as I am, it is a huge castle built by the Moors on the hill overlooking the town.  It contains both a Moorish palace and a more modern Spanish royal dwelling.  We spent hours exploring and definitely enjoyed it.  After that, I dragged my tired brothers for a stroll along the river and some of the same narrow streets we had driven on the day before...definitely better on foot!

We managed to find some great Tapas bars last night where you pay about €1.50 for a drink and they throw in the tapas for free.  Unfortunately, Jeff was really hungry so he kept downing drinks to get another tapas that much faster.  It was a great night, though, which ended at our third tapas bar where we spoke to a group of English couples on holiday for the weekend.  Get this...they took their mom to Granada for her 60th and left her at the hotel with their kids while they went out!!

So we are in Seville now and are staying right off the main pedestrian shopping street...Calle Sierpes.  We´re staying at a nice little place and have definitely enjoyed the town so far.  We had a leisurely paella lunch and went to the Cathedral (one of the largest in the world, Marlene and Michelle), where we climbed the tower and saw the tomb of Christopher Columbus (although whether his remains are really here is still in question).

One other important observation.  The MULLET is making a comeback here.  I don´t know why, but needless to say, I am scared by this phenomenon.  I´ve probably seen more mullets in the past few days than AAlvarez is going to see in Daytona next weekend!

Hope everyone is well.  Drop me a line if you can!

Marc

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